Alright, You Reckon SNES Doom Was 'Inferior'? Well, The Original Wizard Just Waved His Wand 30 Years Later!
AI Gaming News Author · kotaku ·
The original developer of the Super Nintendo's 'infamously inferior' Doom port, Randal Linden, has gone back to the drawing board three decades later, using a clever Raspberry Pi trick to deliver a vastly improved version on original hardware. It's a tale of wizardry, ingenuity, and revisiting past challenges with new solutions, proving that sometimes, you can go home again and make it better.
Right, so you know Doom, don't ya? The granddaddy of all shooters, the game that runs on everything from a smart fridge to, apparently, a pregnancy test (sorta). It's a gaming universe constant, a digital North Star that just *is*. We've seen more ports of Doom than a seasoned pirate has seen rum, and honestly, each new, increasingly ridiculous platform just adds another layer to its legendary status.
But let's wind the clock back, mate, to 1995. Back when the Super Nintendo was still a titan, but its tech specs were starting to feel a bit... quaint compared to the monster PCs unleashing Doom's hellish glory. And yet, some brave souls, under the banner of Williams Entertainment and the genius of a chap named Randal Linden, decided, "Bugger it, let's put Doom on the SNES!" Now, anyone who actually *played* that version will tell you it was a bit of a trip. It was Doom, sure, but it was like Doom seen through a slightly grimy window, blurry and often stuttering like it had one too many pints. Fair dinkum, it was far from perfect, and often labelled 'infamously inferior'.
And you know what? That's exactly why I'm chuffed to bits about this story. Because it turns out, the original wizard behind that SNES port, Randal Linden himself, wasn't satisfied with 'inferior'. Oh no. Thirty bloody years later, he's gone back into the digital workshop, rolled up his sleeves, and decided to fix his own creation. It's like a time-traveling developer's cut, and I'm absolutely here for it.
Back in the day, Linden's task was nothing short of a Herculean effort. Doom was a year old, already a genre-defining beast, and the SNES was… well, it was Nintendo. Seeing Doom on a Nintendo console in the mid-90s was anachronistic, like finding a dragon in your garden shed. But Linden, then at Sculptured Software, saw the SuperFX chip – the same one that powered Star Fox – and a spark ignited. "I had this idea," he recalled, a genuine mischievous glint in his words, "Let's go out to a store and buy the Star Fox cartridges, buy three or four of them." Why? To yank out their ROMs, solder in some RAM and a boot ROM, and essentially craft a homebrew development kit. Bloody brilliant, if you ask me.
He couldn't just call up id Software and ask for the code, either. No, this digital alchemist had to reverse-engineer Doom from scratch, working from minimal processor specs and fan-made documents. He wrote his own assembler, linker, and debugger. It was a proper, from-the-ground-up build, a testament to pure, unadulterated programming wizardry. And while the result was a technical marvel – Doom, *actually running* on the SNES – it was also plagued by what we'd now call a 'challenging' framerate, chopped levels, missing textures, and a whole episode cut. It was a miracle, yes, but a slightly janky one.
Fast forward to now. You'd think with modern PCs, Steam Decks, and Switch 2s (if that's a thing yet!), we'd just play the pristine versions and forget the past. But then a true fan, Audi Sorlie from Limited Run Games, reached out to Linden in 2020 after he released the SNES port's source code. Sorlie, who grew up mesmerized by Linden's Amiga port of *Dragon's Lair*, asked a throwaway question: if he ever worked on Doom again, would he improve it? Linden, ever the tinkerer, said he had loads of ideas, but reckoned no one would ever ask.
Well, Sorlie did. And with the blessing of Bethesda (who, apparently, were more amused than anything, asking "You want to go back and develop for Super Nintendo? Like, for real?"), the project kicked off. The challenge wasn't just software tweaks; they wanted hardware improvements for features like circle strafing, better framerates, and even rumble. The SuperFX chips are long gone, of course, so what's a wizard to do when his ingredients are out of stock?
"The trick was actually pretty cool," Linden explained, pointing to a chip on a prototype cartridge: a Raspberry Pi 2350. He's essentially programmed the Pi to *emulate* the SuperFX chip, tricking the SNES into thinking it's talking to the original hardware. He even had to reverse-engineer his *own* code from 30 years ago! "It's like, what was I doing here?" he laughed, a sentiment many of us dev types can certainly relate to when staring at old projects. "I was like, wow, I used to be very smart."
And the result? It's Doom, on a Super Nintendo, but smoother, richer, and packed with new content. Rumble, even! Plugging this into an old CRT, mate, it must feel like pure magic all over again, but this time, the spell worked *perfectly*. It’s a powerful reminder that while we chase bigger, shinier tech, there's immense beauty in bending existing hardware to your will, in the creative demands of technical limits. We get director's cuts in film and 'Taylor's Versions' of albums, but a game developer returning to perfect their own three-decade-old, 'inferior' port? That, my friends, is a rare gem.
It's a beautiful saga of dedication, ingenuity, and a dash of optimistic chaos. It makes you wonder what other 'flawed' masterpieces could be revisited if the original creators, armed with new insight and a cheeky Raspberry Pi, decided to show us what was *really* possible. Because while the best version of Doom might be the one you have, sometimes, with a bit of wizardry, it can be even better.
Original article by Aidan Moher for Kotaku.
Tags: Retro Gaming, Doom, SNES, Game Development, Hardware Hacking
Original article: kotaku